Sony First-Party Studios

SAN FRANCISCO: The popularity of the PlayStation 4 is bolstering Sony’s long-term confidence for its flagship games console, after sales topped 30 million units last month. Consumer electronics giant Sony went berserk and in full throttle when it launched some information about its highly anticipated Playstation VR and flaunted a number of new fangled titles.

“You will be able to experience all of these PS2 games like never before — in up-rendered 1080p with the features you expect from a PS4 game including Remote Play, Live Broadcast, Share Play, Activity Feeds, and Second Screen support for game manuals with PlayStation Vita or PlayStation App,” it further explained in the blogpost. The company has been able to stay ahead of rivals such as Microsoft’s Xbox One and Nintendo’s Wii U partly through exclusive content partnerships with leading games makers.

Sony boasted off new titles such as Modern Zombie Taxi Co. from their Santa Monica studio, Job Simulator, Eagle Flight from Ubisoft, Rez Infinite, 100 foot Robot Golf, Psychonauts 2, Golem from Highwire Games, and Bandai’s Ace Combat 7. As expected, the availability of the games in the market weren’t divulged, but the experts speculate that they’ll be debut titles for the Playstation VR. Although the portable PlayStation Vita has not fared so well, Sony’s home console has performed better than many analysts had anticipated, given the huge growth in mobile gaming in recent years.

Tipped to be launched in the next spring, PlayStation VR is Sony’s entry in the already crowded virtual reality niche, which is cinched to nail $30 billion by 2020. House’s comments suggested a more aggressive target than some analysts had forecast for a business that is becoming ever more central to Sony’s wider turnaround.

Marks’ two-person demonstration didn’t work as intended, but it displayed that two individuals could dwell in the same virtual space and hurl disks at each other. House was “hesitant to predict” that the PS4 would top the PS2’s lifetime sales of 155 million, given “the cadence at which people expect innovation” was speeding up. Alongside demonstrations of the latest instalments of games including Street Fighter and Call of Duty, many attendees were most keen to try out the PlayStation virtual reality headset, slated for release in the first half of next year. House admitted that he “started out as somewhat sceptical” of VR but was won over by The London Heist, a gangster game developed by one of Sony’s studios. “I had that amazing moment where I tried to put the controller on the table”, he said, only to realise that the table existed in the virtual world of his headset.